The tricky thing with any contemporary opera is assessing it after just the one listen, and that with a premiere cast on a high-tension opening night. Brett Dean’s Hamlet has had the advantage of two outings to date (Glyndebourne and Adelaide Festival) with a Met staging announced for 2020, but for getting your head around the nitty-gritty of the composer’s sound world and the director’s sophisticated dramatic vision nothing quite beats a DVD.

Dean’s intricate, colourful, occasionally dense orchestrations, come up crystal clear in Opus Arte’s fine-grained sound, while scenes where other characters, and sometimes the chorus, are hurling the protagonist’s lines back at him in dazzling counterpoint are made easier to follow thanks to Film Director François Roussillon’s experienced hand on the visual tiller.

Neil Armfield’s staging tells Shakespeare’s tale in a modern, yet timeless production played out on Ralph Myers’ clean-limbed sets and...